re: #140 sagehen

It wouldn’t even take a formal issuance of sanctions; if we’re hideous enough, all they have to do is stop buying T-Bills. (T-bills roll over every six months; cashing out instead of buying another round is as simple as a phone call to the broker). Stop using the $ as their reserve currency. The world could drop us to our knees in under a year, without a shot fired.

Russia and China have already agreed to trade oil and natgas for Chinese yuan, and not the “petrodollar” commonly used by OPEC nations. If that idea catches on, the US dollar will suffer bigly.

As for T-bills, if China sells theirs, someone else will buy them on the open market. Cashing out and not buying anymore would just mean someone else would buy them. China uses those T-bills to manage its foreign reserves to keep the yuan “cheap.” So I’m not sure it’s going to give up T-bills any time soon.

But China has lots of other ways to inflict economic pain on the USA.